One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.

Tuesday, November 03, 2015

007 Week: Moonraker (1979)

This may be the
most schizophrenic review I’ve ever written, and I would like to apologize in
advance.

But for this
space-kid of the 1970s -- and also long-time
fan of the James Bond films -- the 1979 film Moonraker represents a serious
difficulty.

On one hand, the
film is undeniably one of the silliest of all the 007 pictures made in the
franchise’s fifty years.

On the other hand,
Moonraker
arises from that magical year of my youth: 1979.

This was the
stellar season of Alien, The Black Hole, the theatrical release of Buck
Rogers in the 25th Century, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

In other words,
1979 was the first full year of the post-Star Wars (1977) boom, and thus a
great time to be a kid. All the aforementioned films were set in space,
visually-dazzling, and adventurous and imaginative to boot.

Moonraker fits right in. I
will forever associate the film (positively) with that time in my life.

There are
non-nostalgia reasons to praise the film as well.The film’s special visual effects
by Derek Medding are astonishingly good, even today.

And the final
battle in space -- while undeniably a re-imagining of the infantry battles in
such Bond classics as You Only Live Twice (1967) and The
Spy Who Loved Me (1977) -- seems dazzlingly original in its execution.
Two teams of astronaut soldiers pour forth from open space shuttle cargo-bay
doors, wielding blue-light lasers that zip across the heavens.

To a nine year
old kid -- not to mention a 44 year old adult -- that finale is, simply, outer space
nirvana.

I don’t count it
among the very worst of the franchise (a position I reserve for Die
Another Day [2002], Diamonds are Forever [1971], and A
View to a Kill [1985]).

But Moonraker
isn’t in the series’ top tier.

And maybe it
isn’t even in the middle tier, either.

I grew up with
Roger Moore as James Bond, so I bear no dislike for him, or his films. He was
my “first” Bond, and so I can’t even complain about his arch, knowing,
borderline-parody approach to the material.

It was 1983 -- when
I saw at Cinema 23 in New Jersey a double-feature ofFrom Russia with Love(1963)
and Never
Say Never Again (1983) -- that I was introduced to Sean Connery, and his
Bond-ian style. After that, From Russia with Love became my
all-time favorite Bond film, and it has not yet been knocked from its perch
(though Casino Royale [2006] and OnHer Majesty’s Secret Service
[1969] have come close…)

But back to Moonraker:
the film is still spectacular and exciting, even if it doesn’t represent the best
of the Bond brand.

Furthermore, there’s
much evidence to suggest the film achieved precisely what it set to do. That
mission, simply, was to appeal to the kids who loved Star Wars.

Writing in the
St. Petersburg Times, for instance, critic Roy Peter Clark wrote that Moonraker
was “designed to please children….” and
that the film would “appeal to the
generation of Luke Skywalker.” (July 30, 1979, page 5B).

The
Miami News
put it another way: “Roger Moore is suave, the villains are treacherous, the women are
gorgeous, and the special effects outstanding.
The formula never changes, and neither does the result. James Bond is as
delightful as ever.”

So what’s my beef? The film was a huge hit! In fact, Moonraker
quickly became the highest-grossing Bond film of all time immediately
following its release.

From a certain 1970s perspective, I can really buy into The
Miami News’ positive description of the film. That’s certainly how I
experienced Moonrakeras a nine year old kid. It has only been in adulthood
-- and with the rest of the Bond franchise as comparative context -- that
reservations about this 1979 film have crystallized.

Long story short: Moonraker is a helluva lot of fun in
a post-Star Wars context, but not a great Bond film, in almost any
context. The movie is entertaining as hell, but it turns the serious world of
Bond into a place for silly laughs.

And, finally, when you get down to the film’s narrative terms, Moonraker
is also just a thinly-disguised remake of The Spy Who Loved Me, with space
shuttles replacing submarines, Drax replacing Stromberg, and space replacing
the bottom of the sea.

When the high-tech Moonraker
space shuttle is stolen from British custody, agent 007, James Bond (Roger
Moore) is assigned by his superior, M (Bernard Lee) to recover it.

Bond’s mission commences at the
headquarters for Drax Industries, the manufacturer of the shuttle in
California. The company is owned by a
man named Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) who is “obsessed with the conquest of space.”

Soon, Bond teams up with a beautiful
C.I.A. agent, Dr. Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) to investigate Drax, further,
and the globe-hopping adventures leads them to Venice, Rio De Janeiro, and finally
to the final frontier itself. In each of
those locations, the Drax Organization seems to be manufacturing elements for…something.

Soon Bond learns the horrifying
truth: Drax has prepared a space shuttle fleet for a space rendezvous with his
secret space station.

From there, he intends to
eliminate the Earth’s population with several globes containing deadly nerve
gas. His scheme is to re-seed the Earth
with his hand-picked, genetically superior men and women, and create “the ultimate dynasty,” one in which man
will look to the Heavens and see not anarchy, but “law and order.”

Bond must now prevent Drax’s
deadly plan from coming to fruition, but three of the toxic globes -- each
capable of killing millions of people -- have already been launched from the
station. With the help of a former enemy, Jaws (Kiel), Bond races to save the
Earth before it’s too late.

As I note above, Moonrakeris a remake of The Spy Who Loved Me, which in turn was a remake of 1967’s You
Only Live Twice.

Here, the unflappable James Bond
confronts a megalomaniac bent on destroying the Earth’s population and then
becoming the ruler of his own carefully-selected population. In The
Spy Who Loved Me, Stromberg was obsessed with the sea, and planned to
rule from the underwater complex called Atlantis.

In Moonraker, Drax
(Lonsdale) is obsessed with the realm of outer space, and plans to rule his New
Earth from his orbiting space station.

The soldier villain in both films
is Jaws (Kiel), the assassin with sharp metal teeth.

Unlike The Spy Who Loved Me,
however, Moonrakergoes rather
far down the path of comedy, evidencing a campy sense of humor that comes to
dominate -- and then destroy -- much of the proceedings.

Here, potentially great action
sequences take a twist not towards excitement, but cheap laughs.

The film’s stunning (and then
risible…) pre-title sequence finds Bond being pushed out of a plane without a
parachute. He struggles to survive,
battling a parachute out of the hands of a committed nemesis.

But then Jaws shows up out of the
blue on the tiny plane -- where was he
hiding? -- and transforms the whole sequence into a living cartoon, a
live-action version of Wily Coyote and Road-Runner.

When his parachute cord rips,
Jaws flaps his arms like a giant bird, and then plummets downwards into a
circus tent. Frankly, the circus tent is
an apt destination for him since Moonraker often returns to a kind of
circus atmosphere in its sense of humor.

Why do I find this sequence
bothersome?

Perhaps it is because greatness
was just within reach. In my opinion, the pre-title sequence of The Spy
Who Loved Me is the very best in Bond history. It features a chase on
skis, and Bond plunging over a mountainside, only to open his Union Jack
parachute at the last possible moment.
The stunt is surprising, and jaw-dropping.

It would be difficult, I think,
to devise a more deadly predicament for Bond, but Moonraker manages that
feat.

The film sees him tossed out of a
plane with no chute, and thus with precious few options for survival. As I
noted above, he must steal a parachute from another skydiver, battling in
mid-air for possession of it. This
deadly fight is stunningly achieved in terms of visuals. The skydiving stunts
are amazing, and there is a minimum of fakery involved. The stunt-man is a
pretty good double for Moore, too.

Had the sequence played matters
straight -- with Bond getting the parachute at the last minute, and then
soaring to safety -- it might have been legitimately comparable to Spy’s
opener.

Perhaps even better.

Instead, we get a great villain –
Jaws – turned into a figure of fun. We see him flap his wings like an idiot,
and on the soundtrack, the song we associate with the circus plays, thereby completely
deflating the character’s sense of menace.

More than that, the-flapping-his-arms,
falling-into-a-circus-tent Jaws absolutely deflates the entire threat of the
sequence.

Well, Jaws survives, unharmed,
from his fall. So Bond could have too. He might have also landed on a circus
tent and walked away…

The jokey finale to this pre-title
sequence robsMoonraker of its sense of danger. Worse, it’s a mistake the
movie keeps making.

Later in the film, for instance, Bond
is in Venice when attacked by assassins. Surprisingly, his gondola transforms
into a land vehicle -- a hovercraft -- and the film then cuts to a ludicrous
series of reaction shots.

A pigeon does a double take.

A waiter spills food on a
customer.

A dog does a double take.

A sailor stares, open-mouthed, at
Bond.

And a man looks at his bottle of
wine, convinced he must be drunk.

One such reaction shot might have
been sufficient.

There are literally half-a-dozen of them here. So Moonraker
tells a joke, comments on the joke, and then pounds the joke into your
head until you beg for mercy.

Name just one other Bond film
that edits so desperately for laughs.

The film’s barometer of tone is
way off, and the jokey moments are notably at odds with the genuinely
suspenseful ones, such as Bond’s near fatal “ride” in a centrifuge, or his
last-minute attempt to destroy a nerve-gas bearing globe as it re-enters Earth
orbit.

Those moments represent two of
Roger Moore’s best, in my opinion, as I wrote in an Anorak article, “Shaken,not Stirred.”

In the case of the centrifuge
sequence, I love how a wounded, off-center Bond pushes away Goodhead’s
entreaties for help. He’s pissed as hell, and he doesn’t want to talk about it.
He just wants to be left alone. I love
that Moore’s typical suave composure as Bond is undercut here, and we see him
get mad. It’s clear he’s grappling with
his pain.

In terms of the denouement, I
love the moment when Bond must activate the Moonraker’s manual controls to
shoot-down Drax’s final nerve-gas globe.
So many times during the Bond franchise, 007 must save the world with
his actions, it seems.

This is that idea taken to the
nth degree.

Bond gets one shot with a laser --
one shot -- and if he misses, a whole
population will be wiped out.

Moore is terrific in this
particular sequence, which nicely reminds us of the responsibilities Bond must often
face. The scene is shot well too, with
extreme-close-ups of Bond’s sweaty face as he blocks out all other stimuli and
attempts to concentrate on his target.
John Barry’s tense score also helps to forge a moment of remarkable
suspense.

It’s just too bad that this
highly-effective moment follows a scene -- set in maudlin slow-motion -- with
Jaws and the diminutive love his life reuniting.

It’s a shame thatMoonraker
so often goes for the easy laugh when the film clearly could have
stretched for a more cerebral brand of humor.

For example, the movie has a lot
of fun aping the “space craze” of the 1970s, and it could have stuck, perhaps
to that notion. In one instance, the
three-note overture to 2001: A Space Odyssey is sounded
(during Drax’s pheasant hunting expedition), and the key code to his secret lab
is Close
Encounter’sfamous five-note
“greeting.” Those are funny -- and quickly
passing -- touches, which don’t undercut character or drama. We get the joke, but they don’t take us out
of the film’s reality.

Perhaps the more legitimate gripe
against Moonraker is that circus atmosphere I mentioned earlier.

James Bond as a consistent, human character is nearly lost in the film, and
he’s much more like a jolly ring-master encountering a series of
loosely-related perils and stunts. This epic, cartoon approach is fun and
entertaining, to be certain -- and swashbuckling
fun was the name of the game in the immediate-post Star Wars film boomlet -- but there’s also the feel that the
007 saga has run too far afield of realism or verisimilitude.

If Moonraker’s tone is
wobbly, I can find absolutely nothing negative to say about the film’s stunning
production design and visual effects. Everything on these fronts is
top-notch. In fact, Moonraker launched the
space shuttle two years before the American space program did, and really
nailed the opticals of that event.

There’s not a single moment of
Derek Meddings’ work that tips one off that these are models, and not genuine
spaceship launches.

So…I love Moonraker…and I don’t love
Moonraker.

It’s a big, fun, spectacular
movie, and yet, at the same time, it loses track of the reasons why we like
watching James Bond in the first place. It lunges into cheap laughs when, as we
see from certain scenes, it could have sought out tremendous suspense instead.

For
Your Eyes Only
premiered in 1981, and that (excellent) film re-grounded James Bond in
wonderful ways, in my opinion. It featured a much more human, rough tone, one
much more in keeping with the era of From Russia with Love (1963). That’s
my favorite Roger Moore Bond Film.

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About John

award-winning author of 27 books including Horror Films FAQ (2013), Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), TV Year (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007), Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair (2006),, Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company (2004), The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004), An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (2002), The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film & Television (2004), Exploring Space:1999 (1997), An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica (1998), Terror Television (2001), Space:1999 - The Forsaken (2003) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002).

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